Tech Weekly podcast: Stories in games at the Bradford Animation Festival

A special on stories in games. Charles Cecil discusses 'transmedia' and working with the Doctor Who team, plus Marvel comics' Kieron Gillen and games lecturer Dan Pinchbeck discuss how Kinect and self-publishing could affect future narratives

Matt Smith as the Doctor, a very likable addition to the weekend. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC

Keith Stuart presents this special discussion programme on stories in games, recorded at the National Media Museum for the Bradford Animation Festival.

Video game narrative is put under the microscope – how far has storytelling come in game design over the past 30 years, and has it come far enough? Are there lessons to be learned from the animation and comic book industries, both of which have provided visual inspiration to game developers?

Veteran game designer Charles Cecil – famous for the Broken Sword adventures, as well as the BBC's brilliant new Doctor Who games – details what it was like working with the programme team, and how parts of the new Tardis were designed purely for the game.

We also welcome Kieron Gillen, once one of the most respected games journalists in the world before he packed it all in to write comic books for Marvel.

And we hear from Dan Pinchbeck, an experimental game developer and senior lecturer at Portsmouth University, where he specialises in the significance of narrative within video games. He discusses how putting yourself in a game using new technology, such as Microsoft's Kinect, might not be ideal: "If I pick up a novel, I don't want a blank space and a paragraph for me to fill in the main character."